"Classic" Bars - Fitting Difference?
 

I won an auction for a new-to-me frameset on eBay, a 58cm 2012 Specialized Allez E5 in excellent condition. Included in the deal is a Ritchey "Classic" bend handlebar. I had standardized on compact bars (Deda RHM01) on my other bikes, but would like to give these a try since there's so much love for them among the group here.

It looks like these should be set up with the drops parallel to the ground and the shifters vertical. My other bars are set up with the seat-bar drop measured at the stem and the hoods going straight off the bars. My guess is that the seat nose-shifter distance should be set up the same as my other bikes and the seat-bar drop should be measured at the hoods. Any nuances in there I need to be aware of?

the bottom of the bar doesn't have to be totally parallel. it's up to you on how much tilt you want to give it. That said, the top shouldn't be totally parallel to the ground, either. Ideally, the slope at the bottom should be slightly less than the slope at the top, but it's all personal preference.

That said, you do want to make sure that you start by having the bottom of the shifter blade be on the imaginary line that extends from the bottom of the handlebar, and make adjustments from there accordingly.

JMHO. A frameset change is a major change. So is a bar change. I would do them one at a time.

Check the specs on reach and drop for your two bars. The difference between my (shallow drop) crit bend bars and the FSA Compacts are 3 cm less reach and 2 cm less drop for the compacts. This pushed me to do a lot of stuff to try and correct the position change in the drops, primarily going with a 2 cm longer stem (14 cm, don't want to try 15 cm even if I got a custom), using a slightly lower stem (70 deg vs 73 deg - no 65 deg available in 14 cm), and using 5 mm shorter cranks.

If you adjust reach/drop using the stem remember the tops will move relatively speaking. I learned that I like the 2 cm longer reach to the tops.

For you, if the classics are similar to my crit bend bars (which, I'll point out again, are not deep drop), you'll want to get a shorter stem and you may need to raise the effective bar/stem clamp height. The tops of the bars will be higher and closer to you if you keep the drops at the same position.

It may also be an interesting experiment to see how a much longer, much lower bar feels, meaning set up your bike without taking into consideration the bar specs. I like using coarse adjustments when experimenting. A race car driver (amateur) told me he sets stuff at basically the extremes before fine tuning; this way he sees the effects of each side of the effect and he is better prepared to balance things inbetween. In one example I asked him why he had such a variety of intake lengths for his carburetors. He told me he tried different lengths, checked power on the dyno, and found that power peaked with a particular length with no other changes (this was back in the dark ages of engine dynos and no O2 meters and such). He also found that the peak moved around a bit with different intake lengths. I think the engine lost a lot over 8000 rpm so he chose the appropriate length intake. Likewise you may find that a longer, lower position helps with "blah" but hurts "bleh". Depending on how important "blah" is you may chose to focus on that or you may ditch it in favor of "bleh".

With compacts, it's common for the hoods to be at the same height as the tops (due to sharper bend from the ramps to the hooks), whereas with trad bends the hoods are several cm below the tops. Also the change in reach from the tops to the hoods is greater with the trad bend. The the change in height from the tops to the drops is greater with trads. So, normally, you'll have the the tops higher and closer with trads than with compacts so that you're not over extended on the hoods or too low in the drops.

Check this site: http://ruedatropical.com/2009/03/roa...-bar-geometry/

shovel - understood. Even though it's going from one Allez frameset to another, the size (61cm to 58cm) and ST and HT angles are different. Perhaps I'm too lazy for my own good. :)

Looigi - Great site, thanks! The reach and drop from my present bars to the new ones is 7mm in both drop and reach according to his measurements.

CDR - thinking about doing this, but I'm probably going to take shovel's advice and do one change at a time.